Marcelino: “For Athletic players the final is the game of their careers”

In just a few weeks, two years have passed since the party that brought glory to the streets of Gipuzkoa, deserted by the pandemic, and marked the careers of those who took part in it. La Real deservedly won the Copa del Real final on April 3, 2021 against Athletic at La Cartuja in Seville, in the mother of all matches, a matchup that neither the winner nor the loser will ever forget. Between these seconds is Marcelino Garcia Toralthen coach of the Bilbao team, who made an impact with words as direct as they seemed sincere about before and after that event: “I assure you that the Athletic players considered that game as ‘the game’ ; I wouldn’t say that for them it was the game of the year, but the game of their careers”, he confessed to Alvaro Benito in an interview for the program ‘El Míster de Movistar’.

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The semifinals were played 14 months ago, in 2020, and there was time to reflect on all the tensions involved in playing the final, the possibility of winning the title decades later and also against the eternal rival . He has everything, except for the presence of the public due to covid: “There was only one game, in the daily thought there was a conditioner because of everything we felt that the final against Real meant,” recognition of the Asturian coach. In another burst of honesty, Marcelino He admitted that losing that final in Seville was “a very hard blow for everyone, especially for the players.”

Flowers in Royal

Real’s then-coach failed to recognize in the following days Real’s superiority over Athletic in that match, which was decided by a penalty goal scored by Mikel Oyarzabal. However, in this period in which the coach of Villaviciosa finds himself without a team, he judges the trajectory of the txuri urdin squad very positively. Recently, he admitted that the San Sebastian team is “the most attractive team at the moment” and, at the same time, “the one that achieves the highest performance”. He added in an interview with Radio Marca that Real “for me is a total team, in the sense that they dominate all concepts of the game.”

Marcelino He argues about La Real “knowing how to attack, counterattack, press high and defend the retreat”. He explained, which means “it is a good team with little possession, a logical possession and that answers the eternal question of what is good to play football, because it dominates many stage”.